Edmund Burke (1729–97) was a politically controversial writer, a journalist and pamphleteer as well as a member of the British Parliament, from an Irish background, who more than anyone of his generation, and possibly of any other, set the philosophical background for modern British conservatism. Two events stimulated him to write brilliant and caustic pieces which are still widely read today. One was the French Revolution. His tract on this, Reflections on the Revolution in France, set forth principles of the value of slow and natural political evolution, and the duty to conserve the best (hence Conservatism), along with a deep distrust of the capacity of ordinary human intelligence to plan and construct an ideal society. Of his other writings the most important is probably his tract decrying the British war against the American Colonists, for Burke saw a great injustice in the rule of a colony which was denied effective representation.
One further work of his is often quoted in modern political theory, a speech, published widely, to the voters in his own constituency of Bristol. This outlined his own views of the duties and rights of an elected representative to parliament. He argued that voters should pick the best candidate available, and then leave them alone. What the representative owes to constituents, according to Burke, is their best judgement, not their obedience. It is, thus, an argument of considerable power against the principal alternative version of representative democracy—the idea of delegation.
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